Jerry,

State, local, and even local utilities subsidize them.

To be honest, I switched on my own accord. My living/dining room has several recessed light fixtures, and the halogen bulbs sucked up watts and didn't last long. I replaced them with CFL's along with just about every other fixture and lamp. My wife doesn't like them because the look ugly in the recessed fixtures, but she is okay with savings. You cannot use a dimmer on a CFL either, so it has negatively impacted my sex life :)

My problem with all of this is; when are we going to let individuals make their own decisions. If as a society we are that stupid, then just let us destroy ourselves and get it over with, because it is going to happen sooner or later. We should be able to vote with our dollars on what kind of light bulb we want to use. With a little math calculation, and the benefits of reduced energy consumption, most people would probably switch to CFL's on their own, and it would cost us less tax money. There are so many laws and regulations introduced every single year, it is impossible to keep up with them, and to research the feasibility of each... even our elected representatives have to hire aides to wade through all of it. And the more we let government make our decisions, the crazier it gets. Where I live you have to get government permission on the color you want to paint your commercial building, and how much open space and types of plants you can have in new construction. Want to build a new house... you must put up a block wall, materials determined by the city. I am fighting the city right now because I removed a fence between my yard and my neighbor's... I like open space and it was my fence. If the neighbor wants a fence, then he can build a new one on his side, but he doesn't care either way. But I unwittingly violated the law; silly me I thought it was my property. You are restricted to what kind of vehicle you can park in your driveway, you are not allowed to use natural fertilizers because the odor might be offensive (only chemicals are allowed), and certain times of the week we are not allowed to ride a camel on the main street in town. And we have people running all over town enforcing these rules. But if you are attacked by a vicious dog in the street, good luck getting quick response to a 911 call. And god forbid you want animal control to pick up a stray animal... last time I had a problem the city made me RENT a trap and capture it myself. We vote the idiots out, and then a new group of idiots are elected by stupid people. Or we have agencies that can pass regulations without our approval, and we cannot remove them, because they are not elected positions. It seems we think that government must pass new laws and regulations, or they did not do their job. I would like to see each session of Congress try and reduce laws and regulations by 10% instead. See, I am an optimist. I think that people can make good decisions once they figure out they are own their own and government will not take care of them. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Tea Party... we need to get rid of all of them. Hopefully more and more people will register independent and each candidate will have to appeal to the majority, not the party with the most money to spend. That is how we will take our power back.

Edited by ngatel on 03/31/2011 18:33:09 MDT.

"When are we gonna make individuals make their own decisons" Nick, even though we are an enlightened crew, please think about others in this country. I have had the luxury or being fortunate to travel a lot in the USA and we have some interesting folks and to be honest.....they need to be lead.....

Ken,

Are you announcing your intention to run for president?

;)

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

CSNY

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/30/how-to-spot-advocacy-science-john-taylor-edition/

Sometimes you see the perfect piece of evidence. The scatter plot that is just so. The data line up perfectly. And then you realize, perhaps they’re just too perfect. What you are seeing is advocacy, dressed up as science. Here’s an example, provided by John Taylor

Nick, the thing about electricity is your bill doesn't include all the costs, for example the cost of the pollution. I don't if you're a global warming denyer, but the costs of that could be huge. Nationally, if we want to reduce cancers from mercury emmisions from coal plants, we can take federal income tax and spend it on subsidizing CFLs. Okay, maybe mercury doesn't cause cancer but whatever...

And for a utility, it could pay for a new power plant, but it would be cheaper to subsidize efficiency.

It wouldn't work for each utility to subsidize CFLs, you need a national scale. DOE is a good agency to do that.

I think that registering independent is not so effective.

Instead, register Republican or Democrat and then frequently call your senators and representative and tell them what's important.

If you think the most important issue is for the DOE to allow incandescent light bulbs, go for it.

If you think we should keep funding of wildernesses (back to the OP) tell them.

ahhhh heck no Nick....lol....there is not enough glamour in it for me

"I think that registering independent is not so effective."

Well, so far, generally voting for the lesser of two evils hasn't been so effective either.

"The scatter plot that is just so."

I'm confused. Are you saying don't use data plots? Or don't trust them when they look too good? Surely natural phenomena sometimes look "too good?"

A scatter plot of boil time to wind speed might look "too good." Advocacy?

"I think that registering independent is not so effective."

Just watch out for the big-I Independents. They pick up a lot of voters that way ;-)

"I think that registering independent is not so effective."

Well, so far, generally voting for the lesser of two evils hasn't been so effective either."

The Tea Party has been somewhat effective at redirecting the Republican party.

It's easier to redirect one of the two parties than to create a new one.

If you call your senators and representative it has some effect. Just you - not so much. Many people call - very effective. Politicians hate it when the voters start becoming active.

If a politician gets a telephone call, they assume there are probably 1000 other people that think the same, so if you call, your voice is multipled by 1000.

We are assuming that politicians care what their constituents want. Often their votes do not reflect this. Their actions tell us that they often cater to special interest groups with money.

This what needs to change.

"I'm confused. Are you saying don't use data plots? Or don't trust them when they look too good? Surely natural phenomena sometimes look "too good?"

You missed the point

If you just look at data after 1992, you get one conclusion, but if you go back further, you get a totally different conclusion

I was listening to a program on Canadian Public Radio

They said the problem with advocacy science is that in order to get a grant, you have to propose something like "get data to show the effect of global warming"

If your proposal title is more dramatic, and pushes one side of the argument or the other, you'll get more grant money

But that doesn't mean that a peer reviewed article isn't accurate

If a scientist publishes an article with altered data, and gets caught their career is over

That's the main problem with advocacy science. Not the freakonomics anecdotal cases.

I think that global warming denial is mainly just a scam by people that want to avoid pollution controls. And they love the freakonomics people.

And the global warming proponents make it easy by exhagerating - like saying that if we don't keep CO2 levels below xxxxx we're screwed.

It's undeniable that CO2 levels are way higher than historical, and it's because of all the oil and coal we burn.

The effect of this is unclear - maybe it will be easy to adapt, maybe it will be catostrophic. We are in a huge science experiment.

I think it's crazy not to at least take easy actions, like efficiency, like banning incandescent bulbs, like improving auto efficiency.

When the effect of global warming becomes clear, it will be much more difficult to do something about it.

"We are assuming that politicians care what their constituents want. Often their votes do not reflect this. Their actions tell us that they often cater to special interest groups with money.

This what needs to change."

I half agree with you.

Tea party is the example that shows politicians listen.

And lets see what the result is of the Republican Governors over-reaching, like in Wisconsin.

What worries me is the Supreme Court Citizen's United case that says corporations and unions can spend infinite money on elections.

The Supremes hinted that congress could at least require that the original donors be identified in these unlimited political ads.

The Democrats tried to pass a law requiring this identification, but the Republicans in the Senate filibustered it.

Maybe, the Wisconsin re-coil will result in enough votes to pass this law two years from now.

Otherwise, the catering to special interests will only escalate.

I prefer to think I got the point, and was asking droll questions.

The Freakonomics guys are bright, but you have to watch them closely. They can argue a case in a narrow domain, and imply broader applications.

When they suggest "political science" in a case about investment as a share of GDP, yeah, they are just begging people to think of a totally unrelated dataset ... global warming.

I also think they missed an opportunity on investment as a share of GDP. If the nature of the plot changed over time, an animation, along the lines of Hans Rosling would give the best view. I wonder what made the 90's forward different?

Update: Speaking of scatter plots, here are some fun ones

Edited by JohnJ on 04/01/2011 09:32:56 MDT.

Ahhhh - you were being sarcastic : )

I was too dense to figure that out

Then I dissed you by stating the obvious

Now I'll go look at the Hans Rosling link to make my ammends

NP. Enjoy Rosling. He gives fun talks.

"If a politician gets a telephone call, they assume there are probably 1000 other people that think the same, so if you call, your voice is multipled by 1000."

Not according to my legislative liaison. If the phone banks aren't clogged with calls, the congress critters aren't all that impressed.

"The Tea Party has been somewhat effective at redirecting the Republican party. ... It's easier to redirect one of the two parties than to create a new one."

We'll see how long that lasts. Congress is the original Borg. They've been assimilating for eons.

"If a politician gets a telephone call, they assume there are probably 1000 other people that think the same, so if you call, your voice is multipled by 1000."

Not according to my legislative liaison. If the phone banks aren't clogged with calls, the congress critters aren't all that impressed."

If it's just you, and they assume there are 1000 others it's still not significant.

If they start getting multiple calls then they start worrying it'll baloon.

I don't think we disagree.

It's better than emails - those are ignored because it's so easy to manipulate

Rosling:

First, it said 19 minutes - forget about it - tldnr - but I thought I'de watch a little

That is a great video - very interesting data presentation tachniques

And an interesting conclusion - that globally, income is related to child mortality and population growth

Makes me question my populist ideas against free trade

The Freakonomics schtick is to find data that shows how statisticians are stupid or corrupt - slightly humurous, especially if you're bitter and cynical

Rosling is into finding trends in data to figure out how to make the world a better place